


highly flammable

by limeprint



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Brief Mention of Blood, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Inferiority Complex, M/M, Post-Timeskip, Self-Deception, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Swearing, Tsukishima Kei-centric, i have projected my deepest insecurities onto this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27176270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeprint/pseuds/limeprint
Summary: Kei comes with a thousand warning labels.(or; wanting is hard and Kentarou is all too easy.)
Relationships: Kyoutani Kentarou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	highly flammable

**Author's Note:**

> i made a little [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1YImFz82hCzukBFgJpFuK7) if you'd like
> 
> i'd like to thank my [beta](https://twitter.com/plumli_kl?s=20) I OWE YOU MY LIFE!!

A tall, tall wall looms in front of him, and Kei can never reach the top.

He's seen the sun up close in high school and he should've known that was the closest he'd ever get. Unattainable, always out of reach, and he's known all this time that he wasn't like _them,_ that he was a fraud, pretending to be more than he’ll ever be as he hid in the shadow of bigger, better things. 

He's a sheep acting like he's a monster, little red riding hood pretending to be the wolf, and no one will absolve him from the lies he tells himself. 

That's the worst part, isn't it? He's always known, yet here he is, condemning himself to helpless attempts at taking off whilst an infinity of brighter celestial corps shoot through Division 1, then the Olympics, then the whole world.

  
  


  
  


Finding out he’s a good liar made it all too easy for Kei. Easy to act like he does not care, like it’s okay, like it doesn't sting to always be stuck watching someone's back. Like if he can convince himself, he can convince everyone else.

Professional volleyball is just one of the steps he takes in his chase after the impossible. It placates him for some time; doing something, anything, if only because it means he can pretend he's getting any closer to the top. 

Kei eventually makes it to Division 2.

Hinata pops up in Division 1 a few months later.

  
  
  


When Kyoutani Kentarou joins Sendai Frogs, Tsukishima doesn't think too much of it. 

“Jerk,” Kyoutani snarls as the ball hits the floor with a thump. The impact sends a wave of satisfying tingles through Kei’s fingers. 

He wonders if the hotblooded kid is bothered by the fact he's got him all figured out already. Practice after practice, Kei can feel him prying. He relishes in the stares, the mildly exhilarating feeling of getting under people’s skin as familiar as the occasional screech of his shoes rubbing against the court floor. (He's always been a bit of a sadist, after all.)

  
  
  


In the end, Kentarou and Kei drift towards each other almost naturally. 

Kei guesses it's because they're oh _so_ different that there's nothing to worry about. Where Kyoutani is all raw truth and thundering wrath, Kei is deception, subtle rage hidden five feet under the concrete he’s laid through the years. 

Sure, they may be too distant to mingle, react and cause an explosion, but close enough to get some sort of casual, constant, unspoken friction that sends jolts beneath Kei’s skin.

"Why," Kyoutani hisses as he bites at his collarbone, as if to tear answers out of him. "Why the fuck do you stick around?"

Kei almost snorts, relishing this feeling, the other’s desperate need to understand why Kei doesn't falter, doesn’t walk on eggshells around him like everyone else does. Maybe this is exactly why; it takes so little to see through him.

Kei shoves the man off him and onto the bed. His lips turn up against his will when Kyoutani's breath catches in his throat. 

"'Cause you're _easy_."

Kyoutani stares at him after that, and doesn't speak a word until Kei works to coax whimper after whimper out of him.

  
  
  


The MSBY Black Jackals vs Schweiden Adlers game plays on Kei’s laptop for the third time this week.

"Have you eaten yet?" Kyoutani grumbles as he munches on a bag of chips. Kei doesn't remember when he arrived, but he knows better than to be surprised.

Kei just raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “What’s it to you?”

Kyoutani groans as he falls back on the sofa cushion, words coming out muffled where his hand covers his face in a display of regret. “How’d I get stuck being the caretaker?”

“You’re not stuck with anything,” Kei mutters, fingers clenching around the borders of the screen as he adjusts it so that Kyoutani can’t see. “You’re the one who insists on coming here all the time.” 

In the course of the past few months, the wing spiker has taken a habit to visit unannounced. Kei can’t figure out if it bothers him or if it annoys him that it doesn’t bother him as much as it should.

He nudges the screen farther away when Kyoutani shifts closer with a grunt. 

“You suck.”

"Then leave.”

It’s quiet after that, the sound of the recording filling the comfortable silence they eventually always fall back to. Kei gets lost in the dynamics of the match, the pattern of the game growing familiar at this point, almost forgetting someone else is there - _or maybe Kyoutani’s presence is starting to grow familiar, too_ \- until he senses the aggressive stare on the back of his head a few long minutes later. He actively tries to ignore it, as if it doesn’t tickle each and every one of his nerves.

"It's good to know," Kyoutani speaks at last. There’s some kind of marginal amusement in his voice that has Kei tilt his head just slightly towards him.

"To know what?" 

Miya Atsumu sets an impossible ball on the screen. Kei's eyes follow the movement with razor-sharp focus, almost missing the ruthless smirk on Kentarou's face.

"That you're hungry, too."

  
  
  


Some nights, Kei finds Kentarou waiting on his doormat with bloody knuckles.

It’s not a regular occurrence - Kei wouldn’t put up with it if it was - but it still has Kei walk home a little faster after his occasional late night shifts at the museum, some remote section of his brain wondering if he’ll come across a figure slouched in front of his door.

This time, he has him sit on the kitchen counter as he gathers the gauzes and antiseptics he’s been keeping in the bottom drawer.

He doesn’t ask before pulling Kyoutani’s right hand into his, holding it still under the kitchen light as he works on the cuts, careless of the other’s irked grunts at each drop of antiseptic on the open wounds. He takes in the red and swollen knuckles with clinical attention, and if he happens to count fewer darkening bruises than the last time, he refuses to comment on it. 

He’s aware of the glowering eyes pinning him down, but when he looks up to meet them Kyoutani’s gaze is already trained on the laptop abandoned somewhere on the table, screen paused in the middle of some EJP Raijin vs MSBY Black Jackals match from last year. 

"What does it feel like, to be after too much all the fuckin' time?"

Kei refuses to bite at Kyoutani’s cheap jab, gulping down the irritation threatening to jump off his tongue.

"You're not too much," he says instead, Kentarou’s neck snapping towards him at once, bruised lips parted as if to protest, but Kei cuts him off with a hard stare, unblinking. "I can take a lot worse."

Kyoutani looks at him like he’s expecting him to prove it.

  
  
  


Kei is cruel, unpleasant, inconstant. To be kept at an arm's distance, just where he keeps others in the first place.

It's in moments like these that Kei feels like he should come with warning labels.

_Highly flammable. Handle with caution._

"I like you," Kentarou says, neck red with marks as he lays in Kei's stark white sheets.

_You don't,_ Kei thinks. _You just haven't read the instruction manual._

"You can't," he says instead, because Kentarou wouldn't _like_ him if he _knew_ him, and Kei isn't willing to let him get close enough to see the truth.

If Kei is highly flammable, Kentarou is combustible, and no one will be there to stop the forest fire once it catches. 

Hinata and Kageyama make it to Japan National Team before Sendai Frogs can even rise to Division 1.

  
  
  


"Stop," Kentarou grunts against his teeth.

Kei rips himself off his swollen lips with a scoff. "Stop what?"

"Thinking so much," Kentarou snarls, dragging him back to his mouth with rough hands. "Wanting so much."

Kei's chest lights up with everything he's trying to bury, the enormous weight of his own expectations, so heavy Kei isn’t sure he is capable of feeling it all. A burst of anxiety at the idea that Kentarou sees him, sees past it all, and Kei squirms, he burns, he can’t take it.

"Fuck you," he spits out, venomous and vicious. _He thought he was supposed to be the observant one._

"Give it up, asshole." Kentarou's words are softer than he's ever heard them and something wretched settles between Kei's ribs. 

Impatient fingers wrap around his shoulders and push him back into the mattress as Kei melts bruising anger into bruising kisses. 

Kei’s phone pings.

_Heard Sendai Frogs made it to Division 1!!_

Hinata attaches a selfie after that. _Congrats from Brazil!_

The device pings again just a few hours later.

_Congratulations, Tiredshima._

Kei can spot a white jersey sporting a little italian flag in the background of Kageyama’s profile picture. For the briefest moment, he even tries to smile.

  
  
  


“Fuck this,” Kentarou breathes out through his frustration. “I love you.” 

It's too late when Kei realizes he's made a mistake.

"Don't do this, Kyoutani." 

It's funny how they've been doing this for years, and he's yet to call him by his name to his face.

" _Christ_ , I suck at this, why am I stuck with the talking? You're a pretentious prick,” Kentarou grimaces as he runs a calloused palm over razor-short hair. “And you think I don't know shit, but I fucking do. I know you hate your want. I know you want me to eat it all up, so let me." 

Kentarou strikes too early, too fast, too much, and Kei had come unprepared. Luckily enough, he has years of experience in willing the tremble out of his mouth. 

“It’s not that simple.”

Kentarou barks out a laugh. It’s bitter, sharp, raw, like everything about him. 

“You like me ‘cause I’m easy, remember?”

Kei’s own sharp edges give out piece by piece, or maybe they’ve been crumbling for a long time now.

“I know what it means to be too much. I know all about it, and you can stop pretending I don't," Kentarou’s heated gaze never leaves his eyes and he doesn’t seem to care that his voice breaks a bit. "All my life I've been told I'm difficult. Fuckin' hard to be around. You were the first one to tell me I'm simple.” 

And that’s when the startling realization hits him at once. Kentarou has made it a habit to speak all the stabbing truth Kei denies himself, and suddenly he has a name for the dark wound expanding in the depths of his ribcage.

"And I love you," Kentarou growls, eyes flaming. "As easy as that."

Kei allows himself to exhale, then inhales all at once.

The sun is still too far, Sendai is still too small for his hunger, Kei’s chest is still too little for his own aching desire, but Kentarou - Kentarou is bigger than the universe.

Let it all be enough, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> i am so dramatic i cannot stand myself. i hope someone enjoyed my shameless projection on kei. comments, kudos and criticism are greatly appreciated!!
> 
> find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/kuroy4ku) if you'd like to be friends!


End file.
